


Country Girl

by deaths



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24297733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deaths/pseuds/deaths
Summary: Pouring drinks is only one part of the job. It's why the patrons come.It's not why they stay.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Country Girl

**Author's Note:**

> this piece was written for the [premium heart](https://tifazine.tumblr.com/) tifa zine, the focus of which was post-nibelheim/pre-game tifa. it was an amazing opportunity and i'm so happy to have contributed!

“Beats moonshine, right?”

The man lifted his glass and peered at her through the cherry red prism of the grenadine. “Can’t argue with that. Nice to not have to pack up the caravan and head to Wall Market for booze that wasn’t made in someone’s basement.”

“I don’t know a thing about making drinks,” she admitted, tossing the cleaning rag into the bin under the bar. She propped her elbows on the bar and flashed a ceramic smile, polished and practiced. “I’m just dumping stuff in the mixer and hoping for the best.”

“Do all country girls undersell themselves?”

“I’d say it’s more honesty than underselling.”

He curled his fingers around the edge of the bar and threw the imitation sunrise back like it was water, funneling it down his throat. Tifa pursed her lips, tracing the trail of pear juice as it sluiced down his chin. Orange juice was cost ineffective; the citrus trees could not survive beneath Midgar’s barrier.

His frenzy lasted but a moment and he placed the glass back down on the bar with civility once he had drained it dry. A part of her had expected him to slam it down on the weathered wood, as many men who wandered into Seventh Heaven were wont to do—as though they had something they to prove to her and to themselves.

“What brought you here, anyway? Most people are trying to leave this hell hole.” He reached into his pocket and fished out a cigarette, tucking it between his lips. Melancholy cast a shadow over his features and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. “Didn’t always used to be like that.”

Tifa lifted her elbows off the bar and strode over to the counter near the sink, where clean glasses sat freshly dried upon a towel. She turned her back to him. There were some things customers neither needed to see nor know.

“You get to wondering about what else is out there,” she said, the lie sliding off her tongue like honey off a dipper. “And everything you do in a small town is put under a microscope. No privacy, you know?”

She couldn’t see his expression, but she wanted to imagine that he was nodding along sagely, acknowledging that her reasoning was sound. That didn’t stop her from feeling the burn in the back of her neck. Maybe society as a whole didn’t put you under a microscope in this behemoth of a city, but the people sure did.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” the man pontificated as tobacco choked them both.

* * *

A waifish woman with locks that had all the color and luster of rust swished whiskey around in her glass.

Tifa pulled her coat closer to her chest. Winter was just as brutal in Midgar as it was in Nibelheim. “Got something on your mind?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” The woman waved dismissively even as her demons danced about her head, clear as day.

“I won’t make you talk, but your secrets are safe with me, you know.”

A protracted silence. The sound of flickering neon lights, clinging to life.

“My son joined Shinra. When he told me, I didn’t know how to feel, but it felt a little like a betrayal. Is that wrong of me?”

The woman held her glass up, silently requesting another round. Tifa reached for the tumbler, hesitating. She wasn’t one to dictate her clientele’s best interests, but she knew where this was heading. The whiskey would coagulate into cement and pave the way to memory lane.

“It’s not wrong. You wanted other things for him,” she said quietly.

The woman nodded vigorously and accepted the freshly filled glass with enthusiasm. Her ticket to numbness.

“Sometimes I wish he had left this place and found a nice country girl like you to settle down with.” A wry smile spread across the woman’s lips. The gentleman from the other night’s words throbbed in Tifa’s brain.

“Well, I don’t know if you would’ve wanted that for him either. We’ve got bite, you know.” Tifa winked.

In the unforgiving loneliness of the slums’ night, that woman’s laugh sparkled. “That’s just what he needs, you know.”

When Tifa closed for the night, flicking every switch and locking every cabinet, she thought of the woman’s smile. That she had been able to make her smile at all was an accomplishment in and of itself, yet that phrase haunted her—country girl. She stepped outside to turn off the neon light and gazed at the plates that concealed the sky, and wondered if she should have spent her life as just that: a country girl.

* * *

Some months and many visits from the man and woman later, a young man donned in blue wandered into Seventh Heaven. His gait was deliberate as he crossed the threshold toward a stool. She straightened her back and balled her hands up into fists behind the bar. Shinra’s lapdogs bared their teeth everywhere they went. Her heart thrummed; her eyes darted toward the pinball cabinet.

He slid onto the stool, silence undulating around them in electric waves. At great length, he finally spoke, keeping his gaze cast downward. “Whiskey on the rocks.”

His request dropped an anvil on her chest. One trembling hand reached for a tumbler. The other reached for the house’s strongest.

“I knew it’d be a hole in the wall, but not like this,” he sneered.

She bristled despite her grief. “No one forced you to come here, sir.”

“Mom died the other day.” His voice was unnervingly curt. “I have it on good authority that this was the last place she visited.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said mournfully. It wasn’t the first time a Seventh Heaven customer died and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. They still stung in equal measure—they always would. She handed him the glass and he was none too careful in tearing it from her gentle grip. Still, she saw his scowl and a flare of pity eclipsed her resentment.

“Thanks for bein’ there for Mom and Dad. Even if I coulda been, I don’t think they’d’ve wanted me.” He rubbed his chin pensively. “You musta made them feel like they mattered if they kept dragging themselves to a place like this.”

“The people here need some kindness,” she said, perhaps too fiercely.

He threw his head back and laughed. His mirth was laced with a delirious kind of despair. When he opened his eyes, his eyes shone with something resembling softness. Appreciation.

“Country girls, man. Sweet as sugar…”

His eyes hardened then, and the tenderness splintered into a thousand glass fragments.

“…Tough as nails, too. Well, that don’t matter much. Just had to give credit where it was due. I owe ya one.”

He rose to his feet and threw gil onto the bar before stalking out into the circle of hell his kind had created, glass of whiskey untouched. The world morphed into blurry blotches of paint. Her face burned even as cool tears coursed their way down her cheeks. Tifa stared at the glass, seeing her future reflected in the rich amber. She stared until the ice began to melt—slowly, slowly, until nothing was left at all.


End file.
